This video is great, but not for the reason you’d think. The tape itself is from a CCTV camera showing some dirty bastard stealing the wheels from a bike but then the owner of the bike, a musician who goes by “Shank Bone Mystic”:http://www.youtube.com/user/shankbone wrote a song about the ordeal. It’s classic YouTube and Shank Bone’s righteous anger really resonates if you’ve ever been the victim of wheel theft.

Theme songs. Couples have them, high school sports teams have them, even (and especially) bad ’80’s sitcoms have them. Why don’t you have one? I’ve always wanted to have a song play when I enter a room but could never pick a logical choice. Should I be off-beat and soulful (“Bert Jansch”:http://www.last.fm/music/Bert+Jansch), casually sophisticated (“Dave Brubeck”:http://www.last.fm/music/Dave+Brubeck) or plain James Bond sexy (“Nina Simone”:http://www.last.fm/music/Nina+Simone)? The best place to look for your theme song is obviously the pop charts and what better song to choose than the number one song on the day of your birth? For me that’s the timeless classic by ’80’s super-band “Wham!”:http://www.last.fm/music/Wham%21, _Wake Me Up Before You Go Go_. Now that I think of it, nothing says Alex Herder like George Michael singing:

??You take the grey skies out of my way??
??You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day??
??Turned a bright spark into a flame??
??My beats per minute never been the same??

Not actually a consistent feature of Duenos, This Week In Ridiculous Bands chronicles some of the more absurd, yet awesome, music groups to grace this fine planet. This installment features the notable bellowing of the hardcore Shakespearean band creatively titled (surprise!) Bardcore.

http://www.myspace.com/bardcore also mentions the fact that they are more than willing to play at your next BDSM club gathering--but you might be able to convince them to play at your beloved English major's graduation party as well.
Image courtesy of the amazing webcomic "Married to the Sea":http://www.marriedtothesea.com.

“Boing Boing”:http://www.boingboing.net today posted an extremely disappointing article revealing that one of the people heading up public affairs and relations for the Democratic National Convention in Denver will be Jenni Engebretsen, the Director of Communications for the Recording Industry Association of America. For me, as a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party, this link to the RIAA, an organization made famous by glorified bullying and deceptive legal practices, makes me much more cautious to support the party.

From Boing Boing: “The liberal blogosophere is united on many fronts — not just disliking US foreign policy. We also hate the RIAA — for suing our friends, for lobbying for laws that suspend due process rights of the accused (the RIAA’s favorite law, the DMCA, was used by Diebold to suppress information about failures in its voting machines), and for demanding the right to “pretext” (commit wire fraud) in order to catch “pirates.””

Real music enthusiasts have known about “Pandora”:http://www.pandora.com for a while now and just as many have accounts on “Last.fm”:http://www.last.fm. Why then shouldn’t you ‘get credit’ for the tracks you listen to on Pandora on your Last.fm profile?? “PandoraFM”:http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/ seeks to do just that, combining the long-term tracking and social aspects of Last.fm with Pandora’s unique and creepily accurate music profiles. Do both!

The new album is bouncy enough to dance to but not too pop-ish, with smooth male vocals and thoughtful but still-accessible lyrics. By no means pedestrian, _Little by Little_ is what rock has been waiting for. The sound is reminds me of Ben Folds, but without the pretension that makes him almost unlistenable. Luckily you don’t have to take my word for it, “try it yourself”:http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/ . Let me know what you think.

Reminiscent of the Postal Service but more experimental, Macadamia is two British guys from England who ‘get together to make experimental music.’ They’ve released two albums so far and both are available for free download at their “website”:Eatmacadamia.com.

Is it the indie/retro cred that makes owning LPs so cool? Because I don”t get it. For years I”ve been baffled at how otherwise-normal people can go ga-ga for old records. I”ve literally been in the presence of someone telling a story of how her grandfather had just died and in the telling, happened to mention that he had left a crate of old records. After the story ended another acquaintance of mine actually asked what the woman”s family was planning to do with the records. That”s how much people seem to care, and what”s the reason? I understand that a freshly-pressed LP would in theory have better audio quality than a CD or mp3, but for how long can that last? Surely not more than 5 diamond-needle dragging plays.